The Accreditation Council for CME's latest monthly e-newsletter includes a link to the ACCME's response to the FDA's release of a blueprint for the prescriber education component of the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) for long-acting and extended-release opioid medications (PDF download of the ACCME letter). You can read it for yourself, but generally ACCME's chief exec Dr. Kopelow gives it a thumbs-up, saying that the type of results it asks for are "compatible with ACCME's accreditation requirements," and that accredited REMS activities can be compliant with the ACCME Standards for Commercial Support.
The ACCME also has added some new examples to its compendium of complaint summaries (PDF download). If you haven't check it out yet, I highly recommend that you do—it's a good way to see how the ACCME handles potential problems, and is something you can check your own work against to make sure you're not doing something it may find suspect (though, as one confessional medical educator points out, the mistakes in the compendium are so boneheaded that it's hard to believe the providers at issue could actually be making them at this stage in the game).
The accreditor also announced its new board of director lineup: Sandra Norris, MBA, and James Burke, MD, are the 2012 Chair and Vice-Chair of the ACCME. Other board members include Todd Dorman, MD; Mira Irons, MD; David Pieper, PhD; and Carol Havens, MD.
The e-newsletter also reminds ACCME-accredited providers that it's never too soon to get the jump on entering your data into the Program and Activity Reporting System (PARS). I get the feeling they're really prefer you not to wait until the March 30, 2012, deadline to enter your 2011 data. Another deadline is coming up January 31, 2012, when your 2012 ACCME annual accreditation fee is due.
